Down at the old Bul and Bush (KT's interview, NME 12.11.88)

[munnari!usage.csd.unsw.oz.au!sergem@uunet.UU.NET (Serge (Could be worse) MALEV)]

Here is my first contribution to rec.music.gaffa (much more than two cents
worth according to the bills we get).
The following interview appeared in New Musical Express of 12-th Nov. 1988.
Enjoy it, I did, from what I have seen it is one of the better ones and in
eNeMEy too.
I tried to keep to the original style and punctuation as close as possible,
all quotation marks are not mine, I just tried to represent them this way.

Let's see if it gets posted the first time.

			Serge.

Sat Dec  3 20:04:22 EST 1988


from "New Musical Express", 12 November 1988, p.10.
without any permission whatsoever.
read it at your own risk.

OTHER VOICES

Wow! Golly! Holy Heathcliffe!
KATE BUSH is hard at work on the follow up to her glorious 'Hounds of Love'
with acclaimed Bulgarian vocalist TRIO BULGARKA.
"Wot, no wobble boards?", wonders LEN BROWN of Kate's latest ethno-musical
forage, but takes reassurance from the Trio's quiet brilliance.
Pictures: KENNETH SAUNDERS.

		DOWN AT THE OLD BUL AND BUSH
		============================


  Kate Bush and Yanka Rupkina sit on a bean-bag couch and sing to me, Bulgarian
style; Rupkina bleating high and joyous above Bush's harmony.
  Short but sweet, a brief musical meeting of East and West, it's the sort of
sensual aural treat every philanthropist would wish to share with The World.
Except The World would have been pushed to fit in this studio broom cupboard
off Upper Street, Islington.
  We are talking here, my friends, about the power of music. Not 'music' to
make megabucks, or 'music' to drop acid to, or 'music' to make you forget, but
music that stimulates the pleasure senses and gently feeds emotions. We are
talking Trio Bulgarka, those legendary Balkan vocal veterans - Rupkina,
Stoyanka Boneva, and Eva Georgieva - who find themselves contributing to Kate
Bush's first album in the three years.

	Are You Sleeping Strawberry?

  While a Beeb camera crew films the Trip - in technicolour national costume,
laughing and chattering through 'Dva Kornie' - for the "Rhythms of the World"
series, I find myself closeted with the traditionally taciturn Kate Bush. She
rarely agrees to interviews these days, and rarely allows outsiders to intrude
on her studio work, yet here she is relaxed - all in black with long flames
of hair - and glad to be back making music. Particularly with the Bulgarians.
  Her Bulgar obsession stems from her brother Paddy, multi-instrumentalist and
student of ethnic musics and musicians.
  "He had this tape of Bulgarian voices, three years ago," says Kate, "just
when we were finishing 'Hounds Of Love'. It was the most incredible thing I've
ever heard, beautiful. So I decided I wanted to work with them in some form in
the future... But it takes me a long time to digest ideas - even if I read a
book it maybe won't come out into a song until four years later. So I wrote a
track with a choir-synthesiser sound hoping that if we could get to work with
them, they would take the weight of the song from the synthesisers."
  She made contact with Trio Bulgarka through their British producer/promoter/
friend/Bragg associate Joe Boyd of Hannibal Records, who released the 'Balkana'
compilation in '87 and the Trio's own 'The Forest Is Crying' LP earlier this
year. Two weeks ago Kate visited Bulgaria and returned with the Trio to record
two tracks in London.
  "I was very worried because chances were it might not work," she admits,
"particularly because they're so good. It might just sound like we'd bunged
them in a Western track. I really didn't want them to be dragged down to my
level I was worried that they wouldn't want to get involved with Western pop
music, because it has a bad name and a lot of people are initially scared
of it... I don't blame them at all.
  "We had to get a special arranger (Dmitr Penev) because the beauty is not
just in voices but also in the ancient arrangements. He was brilliant, it
couldn't have been better, the way we managed to communicate exactly what we
wanted despite language problems... It sounds corny but I do feel very
honoured."

	I Am Laying Out The Tapestries For You

  The raw results of these sessions, which I hear by accident, sound impressive.
Any fears that Bush might be dabbling in some sort of Bulgarian 'Duck Rock'
or even 'Graceland' territory are dispelled by the true spirit of the recording;
the emotion of the Trio's traditional singing is beautifully complimented by
Kate's distinctive vocal. The Trio sing Bulgarian words, so perhaps the
Azanian chorals of Gabriel's 'Biko' would be a closer reference point, although
there's not quite such a potent message here.
  "You're not distracted by words," suggests Kate, "all you're picking up are
the emotions that they're translating to you. It feels like very deep
information. There's one point when Yanka's belting it out, really fantastic,
yet she's singing something like, "Marco sits down with his mother and has some
bread and jam"!"
  That's one of the strange things about Bulgarian music. You find yourself
sitting, listening, awe-struck, lump-throated, only to find you've been moved
to tears by a song about a bumble-bee or a mosquito playing the bagpipes or
dark-eyed Yanke's marigolds ("I mislaid my kavals by your gates last night,
Elenke, did you see them?"). Whatever they sing about it always comes over as
powerful, spine-tinglingly heartfelt (particularly their lament for the
Bulgarian Robun Hood Indje Voivode). Just listen and it's easy to understand
why Kate Bush and others have been drawn to this music, this antithesis of
producer pop for inspiration.
  "If they sing 'Strati Angelaki' to me I can't take it," confesses Kate,
"I have to leave the room, it just makes me cry and there are very few things
musically that affect me like that."
  Rather than increasing the difficulties, the language barrier between Kate
and the Trio seems to have promoted their personal and working relationship.
  "I've been so excited doing it and it's so lovely for me to work with women
as well, a tremendous difference. And because we can't talk intellectually - we
can't talk about the state of Bulgaria or even what the shops are like in
London - our whole communication is totally emotional.
  "It's an incredible experience, the warmth they give you, you don't often
get it from Westerners. Here it's very much a communication of 'I have this,
you don't have that' or 'I don't have that and you do', whereas they want to
know what kind of person you are... you can feel them probing your heart."

	A Bird Is Singing

  Bush has, of course, experimented before with global ideas on odd tracks:
'Egypt', 'Kashka from Baghdad', the aboriginally-inspired 'The Dreaming", the
Greek rhythms and portentous use of Bulgarian teppan (drum) on 'Jig of Life'.
Here, the Bulgarian singers are playing a more central role than previous
ethnic musicians (Esmail Sheikh, Donal Lunny, Liam O'Flynn, Rolf Harris),
employed to compliment Kate's attempts to create lasting pop rather than
quick cash.
  It's been a strange experience for Trio Bulgarka, who are more used to the
familiar string drones of the gadulka or the strummed tambura or the piping
gaida than to Bush-style pop experimentalism. They seem, however, to have
adapted with remarkable ease.
  "Kate's very popular in Bulgaria," says Yanka Rupkina through interpreter
Borimira Nedeva, "young people like her very much. She sings emotionally,
there's lots of lovely thinking in her writing and she's a very good musician.
It is out first time with such a famous singer and we hope we'll work with her
in the future, if we haven't caused her too many worries."
  There's the distinct, appealing prospect of Bush (in full Bulgarian gear?)
performing live with the Trio: it's been donkeys since the Theatre of Kate was
last seen onstage (benefits aside) but, she says, "if anything could make me
tour again it would be the people in this studio".
  In the meantime we should be glad she's back in the studio; in the 80's
she's proved to be one of the few artists with the courage to disappear for
years and return with original, quality creations. ('Running Up That Hill'
was voted 13 in NME Top 150 Singles Of All Time February 1987). After her
initial late '70s/early '80s burst of energy, it was three years before
'Hounds Of Love' followed 'The Dreaming" and 'The Whole Story" singles
compilation aside, it's been even longer this time.
  "I find it very difficult, nothing comes easy to me. I don't know if I'm a
perfectionist, although people say that about me. I just find it harder each
time to write songs. Ten songs doesn't sound many but you want each to say
something about you and who you are at this point in time; to say something
new. But the more you put into something the harder it becomes.
  "Making an album for me is very much a psychological process; it's very
painful and it gets more painful each time. I think it's hard for people to
understand because it seems so silly, an album's such a trivial thing really...
I've had to accept a lot of things about myself for this album that have been
hard for me. Every time I kid myself that an album will take six weeks, but
once I get in there and get halfway through it's too big for me. I think, 'My
God, what am I doing in the middle of this?' "

	At Sunset

  Well, I know what I'm doing in the middle of all this: enjoying myself,
listening to Kate, to the music, to Bulgarian chattering. So ears aroused and
with a Balkan spring in my step, I leave Kate with the Trio, wondering to
myself how all this works. How it's possible to unite East and West, ancient
and modern, while having to overcome cultural and linguistic differences. I
express my surprise at the power of non-verbal communication to the translator
Borimira, half-expecting a lengthy treatise on glasnost, perestroika or One
Worldism. But she replies simply: "Emotions are another world's language."
  Ooh, I wish I'd said that.

			End Of The Article.

following comments:
Kate Bush's fifth album, Yanka Rupkina's first British solo album, and BBC 2's
"Rhythms Of The World" programme will appear in the New Year.

Lyrics from the Trio Bulgarka's 'The Forest Is Crying' LP.